Summer Update from SKIP Barts

SKIP Barts have spent the past year preparing for project following a research trip last year in 2009. Unfortunately their previous project in Gujurat was unable to continue and was subsequently withdrawn. However this left them in the exciting position of developing a new project. The following article illustrates the process of a new branch as they begin to establish a new project:

Our story begins in the summer of 2009 when seven volunteers, including two Project Coordinators, visited projects all over India. We decided which charities to visit by thorough research, from the UK, followed by direct communication, mainly via email.

We visited three organisations:

Literacy India, an incredible charity, run by Indraani Singh and based in the slums of Delhi. They run a multitude of outreach schools for the children ‘rag-pickers’ of migrant labourers, a blind girls tailoring school, medical camps, a central primary school for hundreds of the poorest children and employment for women making beautiful recycled paper bags, frames and other products. Despite successful trial lessons, we were unsure how much we could contribute to such a powerful dispersed set-up, but have since raised over £2000 for Literacy India through our RAG fundraising and sale of their products.

Human Service Trust (HST), an inspiring organisation running medical and eye camps out into the poorest surrounding areas, providing homework and IT classes for school-age children and English lessons and financial support of college education for the wonderful 16-22 year old girls of Haryana. During our time with HST we did some interactive role plays with the girls, which stood in stark contrast to their traditional teaching.

Vatsalya in Jaipur, an organisation with similar aims to Literacy India, but different methods – actively removing lone children from the slums and placing them in a residential home, miles outside of the city. There were hot debates within the SKIP team and with the head of the charity after visiting Vatsalya, but again we concluded that more could be done in a less well-established project.

Bal Ashram Trust, a transitory rehabilitation centre for child labourers rescued in police raids of the worst factories all over India. The boys are taken to Bal Ashram where they are given counseling, basic education, practical skills and are returned home after a year and monitored, to ensure they continue in education. The framework seemed perfect for the transitory nature of our own summer project and there seemed to be many ways in which we could bolster the curriculum already in place, with health promotion workshops. Their outreach into the surrounding rural villages seemed revolutionary. Bal Ashram has set up ‘Child Parliaments’ which feed back concerns to the local authorities, ‘Barefoot colleges’ – lessons and book supplies to the poorest children who cannot attend school, health camps and ‘Womens’ Forums’ to educate women about their rights and government entitlements. Kailash Satyarthi, of Global March (against child labour) and ActionAid travelled down from Delhi to meet us and discuss possibilities of our involvement.

It was a tough choice between Literacy India and Bal Ashram, but after much discussion, advice and many SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats) analyses, we decided to partner with Bal Ashram and began negotiations for our Memorandum of Understanding with them.

In an astonishingly successful recruitment push, we interviewed all 45 applicants and whittled them down to a group of 16, whom we planned to split into two waves of three weeks, with a four-day handover. After a variety of problems, we are left with a core eight volunteers, in a single group, for our first year at Bal Ashram. We will be there for three weeks, from July 28- August 16. There is much excitement in the group, and everyone has worked very hard preparing lesson plans for health promotion topics such as drugs, sanitation, healthy eating, puberty and sexual health, dental hygiene, infectious diseases and vitamin deficiencies. We also plan to visit their numerous outreach programmes and we hope we might be able to get the children working towards a health promotion performance to the villagers of the poverty-stricken surrounding area.